Character Design Job Applications

Hey guys what I'm gonna talk about today in this post is a little about the industry that I'm interested in going into after I leave college and that's Character Design. What I have here are a list of job applications that I found from the internet and they of course what they want out of their applicants. Underneath I will explain about how I compare myself to that and what people can expect from me. This is very important to put up because it reminds me what I want to achieve in my life and it's important to my tutor Jared mostly, so he knows what I really hope to accomplish.

So here we go this is the first application from ifreelance.com on 'Character Concepts'. This is the job description.

'Hi I need some one to create Character Concepts for my own personal Characters.  I Lack the artistic skill to give my characters that professional look.  What I need someone to do is to take my characters I have drawn and to edit them and give them that finished apperance to them and in some cases I have no concepts for them so I will describe the character and rely on someone to create the character based on my description.  There is 50 Character concepts I would like done in full color and I will like to work around 10 dollars per character so the total project cost would be 500.  The payment method will be simple, You send me a group of 5 concepts and i will fund you 10 dollars for each concept so I will send you 50 dollars in total.  I plan on staring this project the first of january but I may start sooner.'

What this guy is talking about is that he needs someone who can draw what he has in mind. I am so down for that. Mostly I do draw characters of my own but I'm so interested in drawing other people's ideas. I am of course capable of listening which is what he talks about here however he doesn't mention what tools will be required (i.e photoshop, illustrator, flash etc.), I guess he just wants you to just do whatever you think is better in designing a character. I can of course use photoshop and flash but I lack knowing everything about it. I only know some of the easier stuff, whereas you need to raise you game particularly if you're going to be working with other people. So that's really what I've got to learn and that is to learn the entire process of photoshop, illustrator and flash, if of course that's what this guy wants from you.

Okay here's the next one from odesk.com.

Job Description

I have lost a file and need a character re-created. I have a picture of the file and just need it traced and rendered in Adobe Illustrator. Needs to be separated into layers for separate sections (ie, face, torso, arms, legs, feet). Basic enough for an experienced Illustrator user.

Deadline for this work would be 24 hours, please only apply if you are able to meet this target.

I will send the image before hiring to make sure you can replicate it.

Skills Required:

Adobe Illustrator, Character illustration, gradients

Again what this asks of you is to be an expert in illustrator which I know I can learn to be as I said up above and I would totally be cool with the deadline. Although before I have been not so good with keeping up with the deadline, but hey I know I can do better and I would never leave something like this to last minute.

Finally there's this description from odesk.com.

Job Description

Must be able to replicate characters style and look and create a Model sheet to include:

Front view
Side View
3/4 View
3/4 under
3/4 top

Must be able to start now.
If the character is vastly different to what we asked for the conractor will not be awarded payments.

Serious project, needs a good eye for replicating a characters facial structure into different poses/views.

Skills Required:

2d

Now this I can do with no problem.

I now that there is one thing I forgot to mention and that's what kind of company I would like to work that specialise in character designing, but not just character designing but also creature designing and company that has worked on so many huge movies such as "Clash of the Titans", "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief", "The Vampire's Assistant", "The Incredible Hulk", "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian", "30 Days of Night" and only just recently they have worked on Zack Snyder's latest movie "Sucker Punch". They of course are the kind of studio that I would love to go and work for and if take those skills from those descriptions up above on board then it looks like I'm all set. 

So there you go hope you think I may have what it takes and until my next blog, take care. 

Inspirations Pt 10

Hey guys got some more inspirations for you lot only this time it's artwork rather than music and these are pieces of art based on William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Post Production

Hey guys I've got another post for you all for another project which I kind of forgot to mention and that is Post Production. What that was was filming live action scenes and combining them with 3D animation. For our project (i.e myself, James Tomkins our leader and Alex Tarry who I worked with before on the Digital Environments course), we did something which was so much fun and that was a modern version of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". For the project we decided to tell one part of this classic comedy, and that was the love quadrangle between Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia and Helena. What we did thanks to the National Film School was that we filmed myself and few other actors that we cast for the project (yes I'm in the film I played the role of Lysander and had so much fun doing it), and we filmed in front of a green screen. The background of the project is going to be all CG.

What this modern take on the play does, is that it's set in a bar/club in the west end of London and my character, Lysander is in love with Hermia who his best mate Demetrius is also in love with and Helena is in love with Demetrius but he shows no interest in her what's so ever. Theseus in this version is the head of the bar and is also best mates with Demetrius. Since Demetrius is a selfish bastard and wants Hermia for himself, so he gets Theseus to go tell Lysander to break up with Hermia or Theseus will kill him. Then later though some love drug put into their drinks, both Lysander and Demetrius fall in love with Helena. I know what you're thinking it does sound a little confusing, but read the actual play in order to understand it all and then it may make sense to you.

Anyway though apart from starring in it, I was also responsible for writing the script which was quite a hard challenge, the fact that I was kind of writing it from scratch we weren't using the actual lines from the play because it was kind of a new take on the story. But again we had to stay true to the original material so I had to write lines in the old English language which I though was not an easy thing to do at first but as you go along to writing the thing it just comes to you and it becomes very easy. Now I present to you the script frame by frame.

















Apart from the script I also built a table for the club in Maya.




But in the end this was never used.

So there you go, and once I have the final product from my group members, I'll be very happy to show it to you guys, for now laters!

"Captain America: The First Avenger"- Trailer *1

Attention all comic book and sci-fi fans, I am very pleased to announce that the first trailer for the highly anticipated "Captain America: The First Avenger" has been released. One of Marvel's biggest superheroes aside from Spider-Man, the Hulk and the X-Men etc., has returned to the big screen in an all-new adaptation. But for those of you who don't know about Captain America I am very happy to explain to you the plot details. Set in 1942 in the second world war, a sickly young man named Steve Rogers signs up to join the army and takes part in this project to create super advanced solders to fight. Immediately he becomes a super-built fighting machine that can run faster than any solder and can fight beyond anyone's comprehension. He is then put to the test when he challenges Hitler's top assassin and leader of a new advanced military army of his own, the Red Skull. Movie stars Chris Evans, Haley Atwell, Domonic Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving and is directed by Joe Johnston and I am very pleased to give you the exclusive trailer that has just been released and then soon a step-by-step frame guide that explains what's going on in the trailer. But for now enjoy, oh and for those who are "Iron Man" fans keep an eye out for Howard Stark aka Tony Stark's father!

Industry Exercises 2

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've updated you on how my works going at college but now I've taken time to finally get back to telling you guys but first I'll start with the back-drop of it all. At the beginning of the new year we had to finish off the character design in Maya and the Digital Environments stuff, but as we got those done we had another task to do for Industry Exercises. Jared Taylor our tutor wanted us to do our own tutorial about Maya, but the part of Maya that we think is the most interesting. For me since I'm a very creative person and I'm always interested in the creative process, I love building the actual character that you're going to animate later on.

What I'm going to give to you guys now is the step-by-step guide on building a character model in Maya, followed by some images;

Step I: Create a polygon cube and give it a sub-division of two (to give it a subdivision of two, go to the channel box and click on where it says polygon 1 under the Inputs) then delete the inside faces.

Step II: Scale the cube and by using the insert edge loop tool (which can be found under edit mesh in the polygon menu) add another edge loop.

Step III: Horizontally add two more edge loops. With the new loops you'll have enough vertices to shape the torso. To view the object as a smooth object select it and press the '3' key.

Step IV: To create the arm select the appropriate face. Extrude it once and scale it in a little bit and pull it out a little bit. Extrude again and pull the new extrusion to where the wrist will be. Create another edge loop with another edge loop tool right through to the centre of the arm and torso. With the new vertices shape the object some more.

Step V: To create the leg select the bottom faces, scale the faces in then extrude the faces and pull them down to where the ankle will be. Remember to check it as a smooth object, press the '3' key. Also it's important to save every so often.

Step VI: To create ankles and elbows use the insert edge loop tool. It's always good to have about three edge loops where they will be a lot of bending and deforming around the joint.

Step VII: To make the foot select the bottom faces of the leg and rotate them to an angle then extrude the faces and pull out the new extrusion to where the toe is. Then rotate the faces until looks just about correct. To make the foot have more of a defined hard edge select the base faces, extrude them and pull them out just a wee bit. Then add another edge loop through the middle of the foot and have some more vertices to create some shape.

Step VIII: Add another two edge loops around the ankle and add another edge loop around the thigh to create more shape.

Step IX: Now select the edges at the centre of the object and extrude to where the spine might be.

Step X: To create the neck you need to redraw some of the edges with split polygon tool which can be found on the edit mesh menu. Redraw until all the faces have four vertices. Then select the new faces and extrude up to where the base of the head might be. Remember to delete the inside faces. Also rotate the faces to an appropriate angle. Extrude then again to where the tip of the skull would be.

Step XI: Faces and hands can be very difficult to create so I’m just going to give you a simplified version. Add another edge loop between the base of the head and the skull with then the new vertices, pull them about until you get something that resembles the shape of the head. Remember to check to see how it will look like in smooth mode.

Step XII: For the ear, select the four faces and extrude and scale in then extrude out and then we just shape the vertices.

Step XIII: For the hand, select the faces of where the wrist is, pull them out to where the base of the thumb is. Select one face to extrude the thumb and pull it out towards the tip of the thumb. Now select the two hand faces (when you select two faces and extruding them together, make sure that the keep faces together option is ticked under the edit mesh menu). Add an edge loop in the middle of the hand and just have more vertices to create a shape.

If you want to create an advanced model you would also need to redraw the loops around the groin and hip area.

Step XV: To finish the model off, duplicate special under the edit menu and make sure you put a value of minus 1 into the first scale box (for the X axis). Then select the two sides, under the mesh menu go to combine. Finally- you want to select the vertices at the centre of the model and merge them (merge is under the edit mesh menu)- make sure you have a very low value.

In the end you'll have a model which can look like anything you want like this one here that I've created here;






One more thing guys, all credit to helping me learn about Maya are the teachers of Ravensbourne but also an old teacher of mine who helped me put this step-by-step guide together. Her name is Nilly Brook, to learn more about her check her out at www.nillybrook.co.uk. 

In Loving Memory of my Grandfather.

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've been back on my blog but I wanna do one that is a tribute to my fantastic grandfather Frank Boyle who passed away two weeks ago. He was one of my biggest idols and really a guy who fought in the second World War and raised three brilliant kids; my dad Danny and my two wonderful aunts Maria and Bernadette. He whilst growing up was one of my best friends and there were many things he taught me, two of them were to be honest and to be strong, to never give up. I'm sure that's what went through his head as he was fighting in World War II, and from now on whenever I do animation or the "Animan Kingdom" I'll always work hard at it and bring you guys some of the best animation or story you'll ever see and read, because I'm sure that's what he would want. And to make things better you guys can learn how great a person my granddad really was through the eyes of a character that I've created in "The Animan Kingdom" named Barrus. So granddad wherever you are, I will have great things to tell you about soon. x

Frank Boyle
(1921-2011)